The Green Beat Initiative

Rufina R. Utulo

THE Green Beat Initiative, a 6-week pilot intensive online environmental journalism training, will help strengthen the quality and quantity of environmental news coverage in the Philippines.

It aims to equip some 100 campus journalists and school paper advisers (SPA) with the necessary skills and knowledge to pursue, develop, and report stories about the environment with a focus on climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The Department of Education’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service (DepEd-DRRMS) highlighted how the training is an avenue to capacitate the youth to help address environmental issues, even at present.

The conduct of this training is in line with DepEd-DRRMS’ commitment to intensify climate literacy and support climate action in the basic education sector. DRRMS hopes to hone learners and personnel who are climate literate and proactive in championing resilient and sustainable schools.

Members of the Association of Young Environmental Journalists (AYEJ) participated in an online learning approach where selected campus journalists and SPAs from Regions III, IV-A, and NCR engaged in both asynchronous learning materials and synchronous learning sessions over video conference.

The Green Beat Initiative is an innovative initiative that aims to capacitate student journalists to become young environmental storytellers in the hope of addressing the lack of environmental story coverage, hence—” The Green Beat Initiative.”

In journalism, the word “beat” refers to a specific subject matter that journalists are assigned to cover. It is also the in-depth reporting of a particular topic or field.

Meanwhile, “green” is associated with the environment and nature. Together, “Green Beat” is a term journalists use to refer to an environmental report or news and feature story.

AYEJ, meanwhile, is a start-up media and environmental non-profit committed to enabling communities to be ecologically literate and proactive towards a more livable planet.

Founded in 2017 but formalized two years later, AYEJ has organized numerous youth-led online and offline environmental campaigns and has trained over 170 young writers across four cities in its flagship environmental journalism training-workshops.

It has also launched its website (www.ayej.org) which hopes to be the number one source for environmental stories for the youth, written by the youth.

The author is Teacher

--oOo-

III at San Roque Dau High School